All the kudos go to this year’s editor, Reed Cartwright for doing a magnificent job on every aspect of the process – from summoning posts for submission, getting volunteers to judge the posts and providing all sorts of technical tools that made everyone’s job easy, to the final touches in making the book look absolutely gorgeous.

I have ordered the first copy so we can check how it looks like when printed and if any errors need to be fixed before the book is accepted by Amazon.com and the meatspace bookstores. Lulu’s prices have gone up a bit since last year – sorry…. But if you cannot wait for that, you can order right now, of course – right here (and if you have missed out on the first edition from 2006, you can still order it, on Lulu.com only).

The book last year was cheap because it wasn’t sold through any retail sites, just Lulu.com, as such there was no retail markup involved. This year we are trying to sell it through retail sites, which has forced an ~$10 markup in price, because the retailers need to make a profit on it. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to discount the price on lulu.com, but that means that Bora/scienceblogging.com gets ten more dollars in royalties when you buy from lulu.com.

We’ve purchased a global distribution service, and have received an ISBN that specifies Lulu.com as the publisher of the book.

The person at Lulu who work with the conference last year got a promotion and we were unable to pickup with her replacement and go. The replacement is still working on what they can do with the conference this year. So the assumption that Lulu was 100% on board this year was off, and 5 days is simply not enough time to get Lulu to process any old book.

If we have the budget I’ll see about having a kiosk with the pdf running on a lap top.

I apologize to say that this volume is too much expensive. I do understand what you are trying to explain, bro Reed. Ten dollars profit is too much for individual book. At this prize, lulu.com should make the hardcover one. My suggestion is that high quality book with the cheap prize can maintain our scientific community, especially for poor people who want to buy the book. It is not like that your project was successful last volume, then the prize is increased next. I am PhD student in Japan, but I am Thai-citizen. I agree that the scientific blogs is very good and helpful sources for knowledges and I love it.

This is just my opinion. If someone does not like it, I’m sorry anyways.